Joel-Peter Witkin Quotes

I wanted my photographs to be as powerful as the last thing a person sees or remembers before death.

Artists are the people among us who realize creation didn't stop on the sixth day.

I have consecrated my life to changing matter into spirit with the hope of someday seeing it all.

I never photograph anything I don't believe in. If I love working with death, it's because even in death I find this power of reality that no sculptor or painter could recreate, not even a Michelangelo or a Da Vinci.

If there is pain in my photographs, it relates to the pain in my own existence.

To me extreme things are like miracles. There is nothing as boring as a person who is just okay. But I could easily live in a world populated with these disjunctive, bizarre things... I operate out of confusion, towards clarity.

People who hate what I make hate me, too. They must think I am a demon or some kind of evil sorcerer. Those who understand what I do appreciate the determination, love, and courage it takes to find wonder and beauty in people who are considered by society to be damaged, unclean, dysfunctional, or wretched.